Remarks in a discussion in Hudson, Wisconsin

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 23, 2004

And one thing I want to assure you, in all the discussion about health care, we're going to make sure that the doctor and patient are the decisionmakers, not bureaucrats in Washington, DC.

I'll tell you a national issue that's an important issue when it comes to health care is medical liability reform. Green informed me that he had helped pass medical liability reform here in the State of Wisconsin. And it may not be nearly as big an issue here as it is elsewhere, but a lot of these lawsuits are driving docs out of business. I'm telling you, in State after State, one of the biggest complaints I hear from people is that, "My doc is leaving the business," or "His premiums are so high to stay in business, he's running up my cost."

Now, look, I don't think you can choose--I mean, I know you have to choose between patients and doctors and plaintiffs attorneys. You have to make a choice. You can't be for both. And my opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket. [Laughter] I made my choice. I'm for medical liability reform now, for the sake of affordable and available health care.

Finally, let me talk about two quick things, and then we're going to talk to some of your fellow citizens here. One, education is really important for workers. If we want to keep jobs here in America, we better have a system that enables people to become retrained for the jobs which exist. That's why I'm a big backer of the community college system, and it's a system that's working. It's a system that is available and affordable. They're everywhere, at reasonable price, and there's plenty of Government aid to help.

So I travel the country a lot. And let me tell you an interesting story. I met a lady in Phoenix, Arizona, went to Mesa Community College, She had worked for 12 years as a graphic artist. She decided to go back to college, got a little help to do so, went back and got an associates degree. And her--in other words, she enhanced her skills. And her first job out of the community college paid more in her first year than she was making in her 12th year as a graphic artist. In other words, what education does is it makes you a more productive worker. And Government has got to encourage people to go back to community college by helping them to do so.

And if we want to keep jobs here, we've got to train people for the jobs which actually exist. This is a changing world. The economy is changing. I was thinking about down in North Carolina where some of these textile plants have moved out because they couldn't compete, but the health care industry was strong. And so the compassionate thing to do is to help people who have lost their job gain the skills necessary to work in a field that is dynamic, and you make more money doing so.

Now, finally, I want to talk about fiscal discipline and fiscal sanity in Washington, DC. In order to keep the job base expanding so people can find work here, we must not overspend your money. And we must keep your taxes down. See, running up the taxes right now will hurt our economy. And we'll talk to some people that when we run up--if their taxes get--they're not going to get run up; the guy is not going to win. And so it's--but your fellow citizens ought to worry about somebody who is out there making promise after promise after promise, like over $2 trillion worth of new promises and not telling you how he's going to pay for it. You know, he says, "Well, we can pay for it because we'll tax the rich." Well, we've heard that kind of language before. And you know what happens with this kind of tax-the-rich deal. That's why they've got accountants and lawyers. [Laughter] So the rich figure out ways not to pay, and you get stuck with the tab. That's not going to happen in 2004.